


you and me

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bodyswap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 12:59:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14473272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: The Avengers bodyswap with each other. It's disorientating to absolutely everyone.





	you and me

 

_T_ _ony Stark (In Clint Barton’s Body)_

 

 

It’s… disorientating, to say the least.

For one, Tony finds himself constantly twisting his head this way and that to check if a better angle will turn the muted garble of noises he just heard into actual words. Half the time it’s futile, and Tony is stuck with the sign language that his team tosses his way, near-seamless compared to the clumsy gestures of the SHIELD agents as they stumble their way through explanations.

Eventually, Tony sits back and watches Clint as he interprets from the sidelines. Clint doesn’t mince words, and it’s nothing Tony hasn’t already assumed:  _body-swapped. Weird magic from Thor’s brother. Loki thought it’d be hilarious. Kind of agree with him. They’re working on getting us back to the right bodies, but right now we’ve got Steve in Thor, Thor in you, Bruce in Natasha, Natasha in Steve, and me in Bruce. Holy shit I want to try Hulking out._

“Probably don’t,” Tony says. It hits him the wrong way, speaking when he can’t hear the outcome. Or, he hears it, but it sounds like he’s saying it through layers of water.

It’s a relief when everyone gets up and Steve signs  _they’re sending us back to the Tower to sit tight until they come up with something_ in explanation. Then, as they’re heading to the car: _You okay?_

 _Been better_ , Tony replies, cocking his head at Steve. He hadn’t noticed before, but Steve’s worried expression is almost identical to Thor’s: earnest and sweet, all thick tugged-in eyebrows.

He makes sure to wait until Clint is paying attention before continuing,  _Don’t look at me, I’m hideous_.

Clint rolls his eyes, signing along as his mouth moves through words Tony can only hear as non-distinct, faraway mumbles.  _It’s cute, you pretending you aren’t going to bask in the wonder of being graced with my body._

 _Bask. Sure_. Tony makes sure to channel sarcasm into it through his expression, but he can’t help the feeling that claws at him each time he takes a breath and it isn’t impeded by the arc reactor. Getting something of that size had cut his lung capacity down by about a third- it’s been almost ten years since Tony took a proper breath.

The first thing Tony had done upon waking up in Clint’s body this morning- after the initial panic and gathering the team to find out that he wasn’t alone in the situation- was excuse himself to the bathroom and heave deep, lasting breaths for minutes on end.

The second was to place a hand over the middle of his chest and press down. The arc reactor hadn’t tagged along in the swap, but Tony could still feel it, can still feel its ever-present weight even as they drive back to the Tower.

He lifts a hand to tap his fingers against his chest. It’s a tic, something he didn’t notice he did until Rhodey pointed it out years ago, but right now it’s a heady reminder of how much it isn’t restricting Tony’s lungs or keeping shrapnel from continuing its trek towards his heart.

Tony presses the crescents of his nails into his chest, over his shirt. He doesn’t have shrapnel in his veins right now. Or, he does, but it’s Thor that has to deal with it for the moment.

He sneaks a glance across the car to where Thor is sitting. It’s surreal, watching someone else wear his body- Thor occupies space with easy confidence, same as Tony, but Thor’s lacks the performance that Tony projects. Thor’s confidence is easy because he doesn’t have to think about it, whereas Tony has always had to build it from scratch and cloak it around him and hope it doesn’t get pulled off him.

Tony averts his gaze when Thor turns from looking out the window to meet Tony’s eyes. Tony half wants to apologize, but how would that go- ‘Hey man, sorry you have to put up with my chronic pain and crap lungs and all the aches and pains that happen when you’re a non-powered mortal taking up the superhero gig.’

He keeps his fingers tapping at his chest until he gets something else to do with his hands, namely fit hearing aids into his ears.

 _They’re new_ , Clint tells him when Tony makes a face.  _Haven’t ever put them in yet, you’re not sharing my earwax or anything._

Tony sighs, long and loud, solely to have something to hear when the aids kick in.

“Better, yeah,” Clint says. He’s wearing an odd expression, made even odder by the fact that it’s Bruce’s face. Tony doesn’t make a habit of examining each of his friends’ idiosyncrasies or facial tics, but he gets the feeling that he’s going to be forced into it a lot today.

“It’s a lot to get used to,” Tony says. His face twists. “God, that’s weird. It’s  _me_  talking but it’s your voice.”

“Right? I grinned in the mirror this morning and then stopped ‘cause it looked too weird. Bruce, buddy, you need to smile more.”

“I’ll take it into consideration,” Bruce says from Natasha’s mouth. Even if Tony didn’t know about the swap, he’d guess something was up- Natasha has never stood so awkwardly, so uncertainly, unless she was playing a part in a mission.

Bruce even manages to sit like he doesn’t know how to fit in this body, though Tony thinks that’s going to be a trait they all share today.

“So,” Steve says. “Ground rules for… this.”

“Good. I have to pee.” Natasha says. Unlike Bruce, who speaks with an unconscious deepness, she doesn’t try to pitch her voice to make it sound more like her own.

Steve sighs. “Great. That should be a real high point in our friendship, you peeing with my body.”

“Hush, you big baby.” Natasha’s lips curl in a way that sits wrongly on Steve’s face. “I won’t look at it for any longer than I have to aim for the bowl.”

Clint starts snickering. Bruce looks almost insulted by Clint using his vocal chords to make those noises.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Bruce Banner (In Natasha Romanoff’s Body)_

 

The thing is, Bruce has spent most of his life in a body that is suited to sitting down and doing experiments, and a portion of his life in a body akin to an unbreakable battering ram. Neither are particularly flexible, nor small.

So being slotted into a body that is capable of triple backflips and shimmying through air ducts is more than a little unnerving. Being in a body that can accommodate high levels of stress and anger without turning into a rage monster is less unnerving than it is the biggest relief Bruce has ever felt, even if it’s temporary.

That being said, being in a body that is bleeding from a place that makes the fact that this body belongs to a friend very uncomfortable is… well. The hormones alone make him instantly glad that he can get mad without consequences.

Not that he’s mad, per se. It’s more a low-level frustration that simmers in the background and flares up along with his cramps.

“I can get you a hot water bottle,” Natasha offers from the couch.

“I’m fine,” Bruce insists. He  _is_. He’s eating his cereal and then he’s going to check on his latest plant experiments and then- then he’s probably going to bed until someone tells him they found a way to change them all back. He’s definitely going to bed until his period stops.

After he goes somewhere with soundproof walls and screams a bit. Maybe down to the gym to punch some punching bags. Maybe he’ll scream at them, too.

Natasha doesn’t look up from her book as she says, “Bruce.”

“Mm.”

“That sticky feeling will go away if you go and change your tampon.”

“God,” Bruce says. He squirms in his seat.  _Something_  is definitely happening in his pants. “Do I- am I-”

“You probably haven’t bled over into your underwear yet, but give it time.”

“God,” Bruce mutters into his cereal. He takes a moment to rub his temples before realizing he doesn’t have to reign in his emotions right now.

 _It’ll just make it worse when you get switched back_ , he tells himself.

“Do you need me to show you?”

“I think I can manage taking out a tampon,” Bruce tells her. “Thanks anyway.”

Natasha turns a page. “Suit yourself.”

Bruce gets up and places his half-finished bowl of cereal on the bench. He takes careful steps- the closest feeling he can think of is pissing his pants. It feels more or less like he pissed himself and is now wallowing in his own urine.

“This is much more intimate than I ever wanted to get with you,” Bruce calls as he leaves for the bathroom.

It’s… a unique experience, to say the least. One Bruce would be fine with never repeating in his life. After wrapping the tampon in toilet paper and binning it, Bruce scraps the idea of replacing the tampon and sticks a sanitary pad to his underwear instead. Which, surprisingly, aren’t stained.

He’s considering getting JARVIS to monitor the experiments in the lab so Bruce can head to his room and sleep until he doesn’t feel like his stomach is getting carved out anymore as he exits the bathroom and bumps into Bucky.

“Whoa, hey,” Bucky says, steadying him.

“Oh, hi,” Bruce says on autopilot, scrambling for a semblance of politeness instead of shoving him into a wall like he kind of wants to do to anyone who gets in the way of his nap.

“Hey,” Bucky says. His eyebrows pull in. “Something up? You sound sick.”

_No, I sound like a 40 year old man who is trying to sound like a 40 year old man despite being in this teeny tiny body._

Bucky’s hand is on Bruce’s upper arm, still there from when Bucky had steadied him. Bruce becomes dimly aware of this fact as Bucky leans in.

Bruce ducks away and manages to slam his head on the wall behind him as he momentarily forgets how to move in a body that is half his size and twice as strong. “Ow, shit-  _fuck_ \- I’m not Natasha, I’m Bruce,” he spits, rubbing the sore spot on his head.

Bucky blinks. “’Scuse me?”

The hall door opens and a grinning Clint strides in wearing Bruce’s damn body. “Heeeey, Buck. J let me know you dropped in. How’s it going, loverboy?”

“Don’t you dare use my body to have sex,” Bruce tells him. “We all agreed.”

Clint drapes himself against a wall. Bruce wants to hit him a little. Lovingly.

“Not even a kiss? C’mon, Brucie.”

“What the fuck,” Bucky says. He squints. “ _Clint_?”

Bruce pushes past him. “You explain,” he tells Clint. “I’m going to bed. Wake me when this is over. Do  _not_  use my body for sex, Clint, I’m serious, you got so worked up about Tony using yours to fuck Steve, you are not allowed to use my body for your threesome relationship thing with Bucky and Nat.”

 _Words I never thought I’d have to say_ , Bruce thinks as he makes his way to his bedroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Steve Rogers (In Thor Odinson’s Body)_

Thor’s body doesn’t have many physical differences than his own, other than the beard. There are smaller things, of course- inconsistencies with finger width, a length of hair that Steve has never had to deal with that keeps falling in his face.

But Steve’s had to learn how to navigate the world in a new body before, and that change had been monumentally harder: he had to relearn how to balance with the newfound inches added to his height and frame, along with the inches added to his muscles. He’d had to relearn how much pressure to admit when doing daily things- squeezing a tube of toothpaste, pushing a door open, twisting the knob on a sink.

For weeks and even months after the super soldier serum had taken hold of him, Steve found himself shattering glasses after holding them too hard. He’d snap doorknobs off their doors; utensils bent and broke in his hands.

That was what didn’t change, at least: his hands stayed the same, since they were always too big for his body. It was the same with his feet.

And his cock, but he left that one out when the scientists asked him about it later.

“Any progress,” Steve asks as he enters the workshop.

Tony looks up from where he had been hunched over a mass of screens. “No. God, this is weird.”

Steve huffs. “Tell me about it,” he says, and takes his usual spot on the couch, sans his usual notebook. “Never thought I’d have to suffer through being attracted to Clint.”

It’s Clint’s face, but it’s Tony’s blazing smile that crosses it, the one that had taken Steve months to coax out of him back when they first knew each other. “Wish I could say the same about Thor.”

Steve leaned back into the couch. “Should I be jealous?”

“Oh, wildly.” Tony sent another grin his way before rolling his shoulders and craning his head side to side until the joints popped. “Jesus. Clint needs to do more yoga. JARVIS, bully Clint into joining Bruce in his yoga sessions.”

A beat, then JARVIS says, “Clint requests that I pass on his opinion that you’re a hypocrite, Sir.”

“How dare he,” Tony mutters, examining the screens in a way that means he’s still paying attention, but only while concentrating on a dozen other more important things. “Hey, Bucky nearly kissed Bruce.”

“Bruce-Bruce? Bruce-in-Natasha’s-body Bruce?” Steve laughs. “Christ. I would pay to watch that. How’s Bruce doing?”

“Still on his period.”

Steve winces in sympathy. “I don’t envy him. Nat’s are worse than she lets on. She never lets it impact her missions, though.”

“Like Nat’s going to let a little thing like biology mess her up,” Tony says.

Steve follows Tony’s fingers with his eyes as they flicker from screen to screen. The first time Steve had stepped into the workshop, Tony had been working with so many screens he had to bat them out of the way to talk to Steve. Each of them had been a glowing slate of fast-moving data, and Steve had had to blink several times to get his eyes to adjust. When they did, Steve’s first thought was of a wizard conducting his magic.

He still thinks of this sometimes, with more than a little pride mixed in as he watches Tony work. He hasn’t told Tony this, as he doesn’t think Tony would appreciate his work being linked to ‘fucking magic bullshit,’ as Tony calls it, but his mind drifts to it at times.

A lock of hair falls down Steve’s forehead. Steve sighs, then reaches up and tucks it back into his very first and hopefully last ponytail. It makes him feel like he’s being constantly pulled backwards no matter how loosely he ties it.

“Did you know Thor has freckles?”

Tony glances up at him. “Hmm?”

“I was looking at my- well, his- reflection earlier. The freckles are faint, but they’re there.”

At first Steve assumes Tony will make a noise that means he heard what Steve said but can’t talk right now, but then Tony is flicking the screens away and walking towards the couch.

“Show me these elusive freckles, Steven,” he says, bending down to examine Steve’s face.

Steve can’t help the warm smile. It’s Clint’s face, Clint’s body, and that fact trips him up. But it’s so undeniably  _Tony_ \- he holds himself in a way that only Tony can, his face twists in a way that only Tony can pull off.

“Here,” Steve says, gesturing towards the bridge of his nose and the tops of his cheeks.

Tony taps the side of his face and Steve turns obligingly as Tony’s eyes hover over his nose and cheeks.

“Huh,” Tony says, not leaning away. “Would you look at that.”

“Freckles,” Steve agrees. Their legs are touching as Tony stands over Steve.

Tony meets his gaze. “Well. The more you know.”

Steve nods and thinks briefly about kissing Clint Barton’s mouth using Thor’s. It’s a stubborn thought, one that sticks and stays as he attempts to brush it off. By the look in Tony’s eyes- brown, but the wrong kind of brown- he’s thinking along the same lines.

“Too bad we agreed to respect our friends privacy,” Tony says, as if in response to Steve’s thoughts.

 _I’m sure they won’t mind one kiss_. Steve thinks it, but doesn’t say it. “We’ll be back to normal soon,” is what leaves his mouth.

“Hopefully sooner rather than later,” Tony agrees, and leans away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Clint Barton (In Bruce Banner’s Body)_

“Please stop making me think Bruce is sexy. I’m never gonna be able to look him in the eyes again.”

Clint grins and ceases to perform the downward dog, opting to flop back on the couch instead. He stretches his arms over his head and says, “Y’know, he may not look it, but Banner is one bendy dude.”

“We know,” Bucky says. “You’ve been proving it to us for half an hour. Jesus, Nat, do you have to? I can’t tell you how incestuous it feels to check out Steve’s ass.”

“My ass,” Natasha corrects him. “I’m the person inside this head.”

“Steve’s body, so it’s Steve’s ass.” Bucky grimaces as Natasha unwinds herself from whatever complicated yoga position has been shown on those Youtube channels Natasha watches. “I never needed to know just how flexible Steve was.”

Natasha comes to sit on the couch with them. She sits as she does when she’s comfortable, one leg tucked under her body. “I bet Tony appreciates it.”

Clint barks a laugh at Bucky’s face and then claps his hands together. “Okay, no, back to work. One of you go.”

Natasha and Bucky trade a look. They often do this silent-conversation-via-glances thing that Clint can do with Natasha, but never to this level. Natasha and him can trade words, maybe short phrases or vague ideas with a shared look. Natasha and Bucky can  _converse_.

“It’s really gross the way you eat spaghetti and marshmellows together,” Natasha tries.

Clint searches for a deep and yearning anger. It falls flat. “Nope. Buck, you try.”

Bucky sighs. “Your hair is stupid.”

“This is Bruce’s hair, so that means fuck-all.” Clint runs a hand through it anyway- it’s curly in a way that is maybe too entertaining to him. When he pulls on a strand so it goes taut, it bounces straight back to being curly when he lets it go. “Come on, guys. You’re world-class spies. Dig deep!”

Another Natasha-and-Bucky look. This one, however, is one that Clint can interpret, or at least guess the gist of it. He guesses it’s along the lines of  _we can absolutely take him to pieces with a handful of well-placed words but for some reason we like him too much. God knows why_.

As Clint watches, he raises a hand to his ear to adjust his hearing aid. It’s not the first time that his fingers have touched bare skin that didn’t have an inch of plastic in sight, but it’s the first time he’s done it with fully functional hearing.

Watching Tony walk around with Clint’s body and hence his busted ears this morning had made Clint want to crawl into the nearest air duct and stay there for a day or two. It tweaked at his weak points, the ones he kept behind Fort-Knox level security and thick walls of sarcasm and forged idiocy.  

Clint hadn’t been deaf his whole life. He has vague memories of being able to hear properly without plastic at his ears, usually itchy and always cheap until Stark got his claws into him. But that was before one of the many beatings good ol’ Barton Senior dealt him before he got in a car with a bottle of Wild Turkey and wrapped the car around a tree when Clint was nine.

He was- five, maybe, when he lost most of his hearing. He had been six when a teacher finally noticed, or at least gave enough of a crap to do something about it.

Watching Tony fiddle with the hearing aids with such familiar hands against such familiar ears sat wrong with Clint. He doesn’t think the looks Tony had been giving him were pitying, which Clint would’ve punched him for.

Bucky’s foot bumping against his ankle jerks Clint back from his thoughts. He brings a hand up to adjust his glasses. Shit, wearing glasses is annoying. He’d rather just squint at everything. That had been his attitude towards hearing aids for the first few years, and even now Clint sometimes takes them out because of a phantom itch.

“Your morning breath is so awful it makes me want to gag,” Bucky tries.

It drags a smile back onto Clint’s face. “Aw, and you kiss me anyway.”

“You’re impossible to insult,” Bucky says, leaning back into the couch.

“Wow. How dare you,” Clint says mildly. He rearranges himself on the cushions so his legs are slung over Bucky and Natasha’s knees. “Come on. This isn’t an opportunity that gets given very often! I have this one and only chance to be Hulk and I refuse to let the day pass without Hulking out.”

Natasha snorts and tweaks at Clint’s socked toes. Today his socks are rainbow-striped and have individual toes.

“You never know,” Natasha says. “This might become a routine thing. We never thought we’d have to fight a Flying Spaghetti Monster, but then last week happened.”

“True,” Clint admits. He wiggles his toes when Natasha begins stalking her fingers up and down the ends of them. “And we don’t know what Loki’s gonna do when we get him. He could just make us rotate around from body to body until we punch him enough to make him stop.”

“Our lives are weird,” Bucky remarks.

Both Clint and Natasha hum in agreement.

Natasha says, “Hey.”

Clint twists his head towards her. “Yeah?”

She flicks his big toe. He wriggles it in protest. “We could head down to the gym. Sparring should get your blood pressure up. Think you can still fight in that body?”

“…Yeah,” Clint says after a moment of consideration. “Might take a while to get used to it, but I’ve fought in weirder situations.”

Natasha arches an eyebrow. “Name one.”

Clint’s mouth moves wordlessly for a good few seconds before he admits, “Okay, yeah, this might be the weirdest one.”

 

 

 

 

 

_Natasha Romanoff (In Steve Rogers’ Body)_

Strength has always been a part of Natasha she has had to hide until the very last second. It’s something she reveals in a surprise punch that knocks someone out. When she works out, she’s careful not to add too much bulk in her arms or legs. Her strength has to be lean and hidden if she doesn’t want to be considered a threat.

There are times when she does want to be seen as a threat- but when those times come, she can communicate this in other ways, ways that were trained into her from infancy.

Her strength is something she tucks away. It’s subtle.

Steve’s strength is anything but subtle. The evidence of it is carved into every limb, chorded through every obvious muscle that flexes when she walks with Steve’s legs to the gym with Clint.

It’s been an effort to keep her mannerisms as they are. She once spent a lifetime building identities just to shed them when they were no longer of use. Lifetimes when she was doing this but unaware of it, going through life without knowing that one word could snap her into a blank slate and out of the lie that had been crafted into her.

It’s difficult not to adopt Steve’s gait, his facial expressions, his manner of speech. It’s an instinct to do so when she catches her reflection in the elevator doors that take them down to the gym.

Still, she squashes the urges down. Instead she walks, stands and talks like she usually does. It’s not the way she’s always done it- walked, stood, talked- but it’s the way that she’s constructed for herself, building it out of nothing after being scarred over with too many identities to count.

 _This identity is mine and mine alone_ , was what she had told herself as she pulled herself out of the wreckage of the place that had housed her since infancy.  _I am Natasha now_.

 _I am Natasha_ , she thinks as she meets the eyes of her reflection, which looks back at her with Steve Rogers’ face.  _That can never be taken away from me again_.

“Hey.”

Natasha takes care not to startle when Clint’s fingers brush hers with Bruce’s calloused touch. They’re different callouses than Clint’s own- Clint’s are worn from pulling back a hundred arrows, and the fingers touching her now don’t match up with the ones she’s grown used to.

“You good?”

She gives a nod.

“You sure? We can scrap the sparring idea and go get Bucky. You guys can talk about… identity stuff.”

So he did notice Natasha staring at her reflection. Of course he did. Clint’s cleverness had surprised her at first, but she learned quickly not to underestimate his brain.

“I don’t need to,” she assures him. She takes his hand and squeezes. “I’m fine. Thank you, Clint.”

The elevator doors slide open. Natasha steps out of them to say, “Now, let’s see if we can’t get your blood pressure rising.”

“You got it,” Clint says, shrugging off his jacket and toeing off his ridiculous socks. Natasha can’t help but judge herself for sleeping with a man who wears such ridiculous socks, but it’s a judgement that’s wrapped in warmth at the man who wears said socks.

“Gonna be a weird fight,” Clint warns as Natasha stretches. “Hey, watch out for Steve’s handy-dandy superstrength, yeah? We’re trying to get me Hulked out, not hospitalized.”

“Yes,” she agrees, mind already going over it- her shoulders are broad in a way she’s never had to deal with; she has to compensate for the sudden width and height she’s found herself at. Steve fighting style is different to hers, and while she doesn’t want to adopt it for the fight, she understands the need to compensate for the things she looses and gains for being in this body instead of her own.

Most importantly, she concentrates on controlling her strength. Pulling her punches doesn’t begin to cover it.

She ducks Clint’s first punch. Her eyes flick down to watch his footing. It’s odd to watch Bruce’s body execute Clint’s moves.

“Probs don’t try the thigh move,” Clint warns after he blocks a kick.

Natasha laughs. “I have no desire to find out what it’s like to get my balls squished in your face.”

“I have no desire to get my face squished by your balls. Steve’s balls. Whatever,” Clint says, and throws a punch that Natasha dodges and then returns. This one connects.

Clint hisses and blinks hard, righting himself. Seconds pass as they wait, but then Clint is shaking his head. “Nada. No Hulk. Hit me again.”

“This is a fight,” Natasha reminds him. “Not a me-hitting-you thing.”

“Fair enough,” Clint says, and lunges.

His ferocity is impeded by the wrongness of the body he’s fighting in, and Natasha finds herself trying to overcome the same problem. She’s having trouble finding a balance between hitting too hard or too soft. Even Steve sometimes struggles with this- Natasha gets the feeling a quick sparring session isn’t going to be enough time to re-adjust herself in terms of her newfound super strength.

When Clint does down hard on the mat, Natasha stands over him and checks him over. “Good?”  _Did I hurt you too much._

“Urgh,” says Clint, which means  _Yeah, little bit._

She offers a hand:  _sorry._

He takes it.  _It’s cool._

It takes another few minutes of heavy hits before Clint holds up a hand and bends at the waist, hands braced against his knees.

Natasha waits, her hands in fists.

“I’m thinking you should vamoose,” Clint says. His voice is not his own in the first place, but it’s starting to twist even more. “First transformation- didn’t go so well for Bruce-”

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” Natasha says. She’s unsure if it’s a lie or not. Clint would never hurt her unless he had to, if he was lucid, but this is another case.

Clint raises his head. His eyes have hints of green in them as he begins to swell and change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Thor Odinson (In Tony Stark’s Body)_

 

_Is this what all mortals feel like?_

Thor wants to ask, but he assumes it would come across as rude. He also assumes typing ‘how do mortals usually feel’ into Google would be entertaining at best and unhelpful at worst.

Even so, he doesn’t think humans feel this way. Not all the time, at least, and most of it should be due to Tony’s condition- Thor has to measure his breathing, taking only small sips of air at times. There’s an ever-present ache where the arc reactor sits, heavy enough to be noticeable but not enough to cause pain.

Thor is careful not to spend time looking at the scarring as he changes shirts. He has no problem with it, as all warriors sustain damage, all good ones anyway, but he understands that Tony is very private about these kinds of things.

There are more aches- stiff joints that Thor assumes are from age, and cuts and bruises, fresh and old, presumably from the many battles they had faced over the previous week. Thor finds it difficult to do almost anything without a twinge of pain from some source.

Truly, it causes a pride for his shieldbrother that Thor does not think he has often voiced. He makes a note to share this with Tony after the situation has been handled- he does not think his friend would appreciate it at the moment, judging by the looks Thor has caught him sending his way.

Thor is trying to reach the uppermost shelf for scone mix when Pepper strides in.

“Hello. I think you will find Tony in the workshop,” Thor says as he attempts, yet again, to stretch far enough. It is futile, and he is considering climbing on the counter when Pepper interrupts his line of thought.

“God, that’s so strange.”

Thor turns to beam at her. “I must admit it is taking some getting used to. How does Tony reach the top shelves?”

Pepper’s lips twitch upwards. “He tries to keep everything he uses on lower ones. Can I have a moment?”

Thor blinks. “Of course,” he says.

Pepper nods. Then she sighs. “Look, this wasn’t my idea, but- we need you to pretend to be Tony for a meeting today.”

“If this assists you, I shall do so,” Thor says after a moment. “I take it our situation has not been made public?”

“No, and-” Pepper sighs again. Thor has always thought that despite her obvious love for her job, she is a remarkably stressed woman. “This is very last minute, and all you have to do is nod and not fall asleep. It’s better than Tony does at half of these things. I can’t even blame him, these meetings happen every year and they’re always-”

She cuts herself off and takes a bracing breath inwards. “You’ll help, then?”

Thor nods curtly. “Do not worry, Pepper. All will be well.”

Pepper shoots him a relieved smile. “Thanks to you. And- okay, if they do want you to talk, please just try your best to sound… Starkish.”

“I do not sound Starkish?” Thor grins.

It coaxes a grin in response. “No, Thor, you don’t.”

Thor follows her to a car and listens more or less thoroughly as she explains the gist of what the meeting will be about. It does not sound all too interesting to Thor, but he gets Pepper to explain some of the terms to him in order to have some commodity of understanding if the situation arises where he needs it.

True to his word, he does not fall asleep in the meeting. It comes close, though, around the 2 and a half-hour mark, after all he’s done is make agreeing noises and attempt to seem alert and interested.

This is apparently a wrongdoing, as Pepper leans in to whisper, “You’re trying to convince these people you’re Tony Stark, remember? Try to look a little more bored.”

“I don’t believe that will be a problem,” Thor tells her quietly, prompting a laugh that Pepper hastily smothers.

All is well until the meeting is winding down and people are beginning to leave. The director of the meeting, Sanders Something, says, “And as always, it was good to have you here, Mr. Stark. How’s life as a superhero?”

Thor lifts his head. How would Tony respond to this?

“Oh, grand,” Thor tries. He winces internally. Hopefully they would take it as sarcasm or Tony being odd.

Sanders blinks. His nod in reply is halting, but other than that, no one seems to care.

“You worry far too much,” Thor tells Pepper as they exit the building. “Just how strange would I have to act for one of them to say ‘oh yes, of course, that can’t be Tony Stark! It must be his comrade, Thor, in Tony Stark’s body!’”

“I’m just glad they didn’t ask you to go over anything scientific,” Pepper admits.

As they approach the car, Thor nods slowly. “You are of course aware that Asgard is lightyears ahead of Earth’s technology.”

“And do you know anything about it?”

Thor barks a laugh. “A fair point from a fair lady,” he says, and steps in front of her to hold her door open.

She thanks him and slides into her seat. “How is the hunt for your brother going?”

“It is almost at a successful end, the last I heard of it,” Thor says as he climbs into the car. One benefit to being in Tony Stark’s body- he has no need to bend in order to stop his head from skimming the roof of the car.

Pepper purses her lips. “It must be so strange, being in someone else’s body. A friend, no less.”

“It is an entirely new experience,” Thor agrees. “But one that I think will help us understand each other better as teammates. One moment.”

He pulls out his vibrating phone to see he’s received a Snapchat from Natasha. It’s of the Hulk floating on his back in the swimming pool Tony didn’t know he owned until they uncovered it months previously.

 _Clint’s having safe family fun_ , is the caption.

Thor laughs and begins to type out a reply when a text comes in, this time from Coulson.

_Found Loki. All Avengers come into HQ immediately._

Thor types out a reply:  _omw_.

**Author's Note:**

> here's my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).


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